some stereotypes about gays

I know we only touched on sexuality and didnt really discuss gay and lesbian, but we all have some idea of stereotypes about them. this hilarious video is touching on gay stereotypes, and the relationship between girls and gays.

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Great find. What is also interesting is that this is a later incarnation of an internet meme that was not really critical, and may have reinforced stereotyping. The earlier meme was “Shit girls say” and examples are here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-yLGIH7W9Y

I think that one thing that makes a difference is that in the “Shit Girls Say to…” videos, the viewer is the subject. One of the things that makes these videos critical is the fact that the viewer feels how ridiculous the comments are because they have them directed at them. Instead of just laughing at the performers because we identify what is being said with the people that the video is making fun of, we are also forced to think about how the comments make other people feel.

Of course, it makes you wonder too — if we can so easily satirize and make these supposedly inappropriate and offensive sayings comical — how offensive are they actually being? Has it become appropriate or at least acceptable to make those sorts of comments? Has social progress reached its limits?

Think about it.

I think most of us can agree that the common use of the phrase “that’s so gay” to describe something bad is homophobic and has a detrimental effect on children, queer youth, and society at large. The same can be said of all other discriminatory and prejudicial comments, such as the racist comments satirized in “Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls”.

But how serious is discriminatory speech, then, if we can satirize and laugh about it? In these satirical videos, the viewer is put in the perspective of a subject of prejudice, where the only reaction is essentially to laugh it off. The idea of holding the other person responsible for what they say is out of the question — an ironic twist on the impoliteness of demanding political correctness.

These videos make it seem that, while prejudice is absurd, it is also something that can simply be laughed away. The responsibility is on the victim of prejudice to ignore, rather than on the perpetrator of prejudice to change. It even raises the question of how serious prejudice is in the first place — if we have reached a period where we laugh at racism, how can racism be considered a serious problem?